Terrorism: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Improving Responses U.S.-Russian Workshop Proceedings (2004) / Chapter Skim
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Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism—A Report of the U.S. National Academies
Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism—A Report of the U.S. National Academies
Pages 149-159
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From page 149... ...
The study set out to answer three primary questions: 1. How can science and engineering contribute to making the nation safer against the threat of catastrophic terrorism?
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From page 150... ...
The U.S. government was obviously concerned that the Baathist government of Iraq might represent such a state, although evidence indicating a link to the September 11, 2001, attack is substantively outweighed by data to the contrary.4 ADVANTAGES OF INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES THREATENED BY TERRORISTS Modern industrial societies have some offsetting advantages to terrorism.
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From page 151... ...
Creation of a domestic intelligence service to further this aim has been discussed by politicians, but these approaches may threaten the very civil liberties and constitutional rights the government is sworn to protect. The third type of policy engages technology and management to harden domestic targets, reduce the damage, and enhance recovery.
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From page 152... ...
The terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, certainly created mass destruction, but the weapon used (a fully fueled airliner used as a manned cruise missile) was technically not a WMD -- that is, it did not arise from a military system designed for mass destruction.5 ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS: COMMERCIAL EFFICIENCY CREATES VULNERABILITIES The vulnerabilities of modern industrial societies result not only from the possible escape from government control of military WMDs but also from the possible use of products of commercial and industrial operations that may be used as weapons by terrorists.
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From page 153... ...
· voluntary commitments with antitrust exemption (The chemical industry in the United States has an excellent record of voluntary standards for plant safety that might become a model for protections from terrorism.) · reinsurance as an inducement to set a sliding scale of rates for terrorism loss insurance, reflecting the extent to which client firms have adopted hardening measures DUAL-USE STRATEGIES FOR HARDENING INDUSTRY In a limited number of cases, firms may be able to devise hardening strategies that also reduce costs or improve product or service value so that the total
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From page 154... ...
to create a more sustainable public commitment to the costs and inconveniences of national efforts against terrorist threats 3. to integrate homeland security research and development with the rest of the societal research and engineering base to ensure that a fully national effort of high quality results Because the targets and many of the weapons are imbedded in the civil economy, security issues cannot be neatly separated from the daily life of the civil population.
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From page 155... ...
A solution recommended in the Academies report is the production of a substantial number of mid-sized transformers specifically designed to be reconfigurable in combination to replace one of the failed high-voltage transformers. Another example is the replacement of operating engineers in power distribution control rooms with computer systems running Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)
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Communications and Information Systems In the United States the most urgent issue is to reconfigure first responder communications so that police, fire, and medical personnel can communicate with one another and with the emergency operations center (EOC)
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As already noted, air intakes for large buildings need to be less accessible and equipped with better air filters, perhaps with chemical analysis sufficient to determine that a toxic material is present. Instrumentation to allow first responders to detect toxic and hazardous materials; special provisions for protecting harbors, bridges, dams, tunnels, and dikes; and protection against attacks on urban water supplies downstream from the treatment plant are all discussed in the Academies report.
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From page 158... ...
An evident example is the notion of complex networks of sensors that are coupled to databases, within which the network output is fused with other information and from which sensible information must be provided so that local officials in EOCs can use it. Thus, priority setting requires modeling and simulating attack and response and red teaming to test the effectiveness of proposed solutions.
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From page 159... ...
4. Gerald Holton anticipates just such a combination of individual terrorists supported by a rogue government in a paper presented at a terrorism conference at the Hoover Institution in 1976 and published at that time in Terrorism, an International Journal.
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